Learning The Drop Shot

Robert and his son Steven joined e this morning for a half day of fishing. I wasn’t sure how the trolling bite was going to be, based on the winds, but I was going to try. They were blowing from the west and a good cop was on the water, making the conditions almost perfect. The only issue I might have would be the 78 degree water temps!

I ran to an area and set the lines over slightly deeper water hoping for a quick bite. What I received however was anything short of that! I spent almost 30 minutes before the first reel fired and Steven brought in a small pike. About 15 minutes later another reel went off and the fish was gone before I could even hand him the rod. I was a little disappointed as I was sure it was a walleye!

I had covered plenty of water with only a couple of bites and decided to troll to another area further away. We should have had multiple reels firing from here but were only able to scratch up one more northern. As I had already wasted a couple of hours with dismal results, I pulled the plug on trolling and headed to deeper water to try for some bass.

Dropshotting was going to be the technique being used on this spot and after a quick demonstration of what to do, they began the vertical presentation. First drift, they both had chances but they lost the fish due to not enough pressure. They were new to this and I wasn’t surprised! We kept drifting and unfortunately the same thing kept happening. They would have the fish briefly hooked and seconds later it was gone. Multiple drifts were made and each time the same results were seen. I decided to hold Steven’s rod on one of the passes and nailed a fish seconds later. Once I was sure it was on, I passed him the rod and he did battle with the smallie. A quick pic and a release and we went back up for more!

Time was passing by quickly and although they were getting multiple hits in the area, they were still missing fish. I think Robert had a dozen before he actually held on to his first bass. It was ironic too as Steven was locked up as well and I had to do a double net job!

We were almost done and after one more fish by Steven, I called it. I headed back to the docks in much bigger rollers than I had started in and was glad it was only a half day. The winds had increased out of the west and getting bigger by the minute. This afternoon wouldn’t have been pleasant!

Overall it may have been tough but a few adjustments saw several good fish being landed. I only wish that they could have caught everything they were bit from but that’s fishing! They did however leave with a better understanding of the deep water dropshotting technique and hopefully will be able to use it on their own, on future fishing trips. Only time will tell but I’m sure they’ll give it a try!